1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for the efficient transmission of data, in particular of sensor values.
2. Description of the Related Art
The so-called memory-mapped I/O method may be used, for example, as a method for transmitting data between peripheral devices and processors in digital systems. For this purpose, I/O registers of the peripheral devices are mapped onto the memory address space of a processor; access to these registers then being gained via a memory access routine. If the peripheral device is a sensor, processors may access the value currently detected by the sensor via defined memory addresses.
In typical embedded systems, for example in the engine control system in a vehicle, sensor values are regularly processed by a processor. The processing of sensor values may be roughly divided into three steps: a property is detected by a sensor and is digitized; the processor that processes the sensor value reads the current sensor value; and the processor processes the sensor value.
In a system that has many processors (multi-core or many-core system), the processors usually have a local memory, which may also be writable via a global address. The sensor value may then be copied first to the local memory of the processor; and the processing of the sensor value may then be performed using the local copy. Reading out a sensor value may occupy a shared resource in the process, for example a communications bus or a network-on-chip (NoC).
Such systems have the disadvantage, however, that the resource is occupied at least nearly continuously and that the data transmission consumes much current.
It is therefore desirable to indicate a method that allows for an efficient transmission of data and low current consumption.